Tuesday, 19 August 2008

Tory MEP and Euro Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan-Scott effectively called me a liar on BBC Radio 5Live's Stephen Nolan show a few Sundays ago when I pointed out that when China tried to improve its abysmal workers' rights situation in 2006 the American Chamber of Commerce, representing a swathe of top businesses like Walmart and Nike, lobbied hard to get it stopped.

He also accused me of being in thrall to the Chinese government ("China is your regime") and said I wasn't properly British, insisting on defining me as Chinese. In the past few weeks I've had to put up with assorted ad hominem attacks on air and in the blogosphere, been told that the Chinese are "ants" and "robots", and carrying out genocide "against themselves". This last reminds me of the Kamikaze contingent that should heve rescued our hero in Life Of Brian when he was nailed up on his cross. Dur! Yes, that makes sense!

Many of the largest corporations--many of whom contribute significant amounts of money to the Republican and Democratic parties and their candidates--are doing everything possible to keep their slave wage heaven in China.

STOP PRESS!!!Hah! Would you believe it? The BBC have put me head-to-head again with the Tory MEP and European Parliament Vice President Edward McMillan-Scott who accuses China of being guilty of genocide.

3 comments:

The story shouldn't be surprising at all if you look at what's been going on in the Northern Marianas (supposedly an actual US territory). The whole point about outsourcing your production overseas being to take advantage of more lax conditions than would be allowed at home. It's a race to the bottom - though if China improves conditions, they could always move to cheaper places like, say, North Korea...

This was an old issue which had been raised in many Asian forums few years ago.

The blocking and objection at the labour law shows that western corporations are not ready to move away from China yet. They still need Chinese workers' skills and the conditions that had been built up over the years in China.

It also indicates that western corporations are less confident with other countries (India, Indonesia...etc.)

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